


The Queen of Vaes Tolorro

by Vaznetti



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Drabble Sequence, Gen, Post-Series, Season 8 Spoilers, resfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-26 09:43:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19765597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vaznetti/pseuds/Vaznetti
Summary: Daenerys wakes in the city of bones: a good place for a ghost.





	The Queen of Vaes Tolorro

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Wavesinger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wavesinger/gifts).



1.

She woke in the shade of Drogon's wing. Her mouth tasted of ash, but when Daenerys touched her chest she found only a long scar like a burn, as if Drogon's own heat had healed her. Perhaps it had: he nudged her now to sit, and rolled a bit of blackened meat to her. She wolfed it down, ignoring the dirt, and pushed herself to stand.

He had brought her to a great empty plaza, a few small grasses pushing through the cracked stones. She knew the place now: Vaes Tolorro, city of bones. A good place for a ghost.

2.

There were trees still in the ruined courtyards here, and wells full of clear water. Daenerys ate fruit and the meat Drogon brought, and grew slowly stronger. In the day, her time in Westeros seemed like a dream, but at night her people rose up around her, demanding vengeance. What had become of Grey Worm after Drogon had carried her away? Of her bloodriders? Had Jon Snow taken her throne, in the end, despite all his promises? She started awake, clutching the place where the knife had entered her heart.

Would Drogon carry her back, she wondered, if she asked?

3.

When the sun rose she made her choice. Drogon appeared with another blackened carcass, eating most but leaving a piece for her. She rested her head against his great chest, the last of her children, and shivered despite the heat. He seemed to shudder too, when she climbed onto his back, as if he knew what she would ask.

From the air Vaes Tolorro was a patch of green life, and the Red Waste stretched dead for miles around. Daenerys almost missed the tiny shapes, stranded among the rocks below: only their long shadows as they walked caught her eye.

4.

Drogon wheeled back and settled in the dry riverbed, and Daenerys clambered down. An old man, she saw, two women clutching infants, a child trailing behind. They were thin, their faces lined with dirt; they must have been walking for days already. She knew what it was like, to be lost in the Red Waste.

She held out her empty hands. "Come," she said. "There is water, and food not far away." She helped them onto Drogon's back, holding the child before her as Drogon rose again. Westeros could wait, she thought: these children would live now because of her.

5.

Westeros continued to wait: she tried once to take Drogon past the edges of the waste, but he refused. They flew instead to find the lost people, the desperate, for whom death in the Red Waste was a risk worth taking. 

Her people were here, the refugees of a dozen tribes; she heard from them echoes of the world outside, the revolt that ended slavery in Volantis, the trade ships sent from Mereen, the rumour of the Unsullied guarding the island of Naath. Freedom grew like the abandoned trees of Vaes Tolorro, without her watching, bearing its own good fruit.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think that Vaes Tolorro actually exists in the show universe (does it?) so this is a bit of a mash-up between the books and the show canon, but I hope that you like it anyway!


End file.
